Category: Football

We have been in a sprints race against Time! We were 20, or so, at the start of the race.  It is hard to believe that without missing a single beat, without stopping for a single second, time has been...

Last weekend, the Vanguard newspaper reported an incident between its reporters and Emmanuel Okala, MON, one of the heroes of the Gold-medal winning team of the 2nd All-Africa Games in 1973, a member of the winning squad of the 1980 African Cup of...

There is a very important two-year lacuna in Nigeria’s sports development structure that requires a little forensic probing. In the past, we often spoke of the efficacy of the grassroots architecture of Nigerian sports, how we evolved through the school...

Football is, probably, the most powerful and most followed human activity on earth.  For many of its adherents to jointly conclude that one person is probably the greatest football player of all time cannot be considered flimsy or a mean...

In the aftermath of the two matches between the Leone Stars and the Super Eagles I have refused to make any comments. I have been besieged with questions about why I have remained silent. I am surprised that people are surprised that I...

I read this morning that Fatai Amao, ‘Arsenal’, one of the most brilliant midfielders of his generation in the 1980s, a player who, with his silky touches on the ball and immaculate dribbling skills, could have played for any club in...

I was a member of the Professional Football Implementation Committee that developed and established the policies and the structures for the take-off and running of the professional league in Nigeria. The committee designed a business template for football that other...

Sport is presently slave labour in Nigeria. Without exaggerating, and I am asserting with all sense of responsibility, most athletes in the Nigerian domestic sport landscape are living in poverty. The evidence is all around us in the level of...

When you do not know where you are coming from, how would you know where you are going? You cannot chart a course to any destination as any movement in any direction will be groping in the darkness of uncertainty....